Gizmodo: Free iPhone Tetris Getting Pulled from App Store

by Volker Weber

Tris, the free version of Tetris for the iPhone that we loved ('cause it was free!) is being pulled from the App Store. Apparently, The Tetris Company called up Apple and it no likey. Its creator, Noah Witherspoon says that while he thinks their copyright claim is thin—and would be thinner still if he called it "Trys"—he doesn't really have the resources to fight it in court, so he's removing it from the store on Wednesday. Download it while you can folks! Another depressing reminder why we need the iPhone app black market.

Tris is still available here>

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Used & new

by Volker Weber

My favorite Firefox extension - works in Internet Explorer and Safari as well

by Volker Weber

Mozilla selects its 7 best Firefox 3 extensions, but I am missing my favorite one: Cooliris, the artist formerly known as Piclens.

Google Maps outdone in many places

by Volker Weber

Frank Sautter has written a nice application that lets you compare Google Maps and OpenStreetMap, The Free Wiki World Map, by overlaying one map with the other and providing a transparency slider:

Bodenseepeter lists ten places where OpenStreetMap outshines Google Maps.

[via Robert Basic]

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How to get an "Award of Excellence"

by Volker Weber

My name is Robin Goldstein, and I’m the author of a new book called The Wine Trials (book here; website here). Lately, I’ve become curious about how Wine Spectator magazine determines its Awards of Excellence for the world’s best wine restaurants. As part of the research for an academic paper I’m currently working on about standards for wine awards, I submitted an application for a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence. I named the restaurant “Osteria L’Intrepido”. ...

Osteria L’Intrepido won the Award of Excellence, as published in print in the August 2008 issue of Wine Spectator. ... While it’s interesting that the reserve list would receive such seemingly little scrutiny, the central point is that the wine cellar doesn’t actually exist.

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[Thanks, Karen]

Slate: Take That, Stupid Printer!

by Volker Weber

How to fight back against the lying, infuriating, evil ink-and-toner cabal.

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Ich verstehe es auch nicht

by Volker Weber

Und dennoch verstehe ich nicht, warum "5 Deutsche tot" uns näher geht als "156 Fluggäste tot". Ich verstehe es nicht.

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Early bird travel for Lotusphere

by Volker Weber

LH464 was booked solid last year and they tried to buy people off the plane. I could not get a flight on Saturday when I tried to book and had to travel a day early. Now there are still plenty of seats on LH464/465, direct service from FRA to MCO. Make up your mind early, and you will have no difficulties getting the direct flight.

The Ultimate Steal?

by Volker Weber

As part of Microsoft Corp.’s commitment to education, the company is re-introducing The Ultimate Steal program this school year, inviting students who are actively enrolled at educational institutions to purchase Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 at a low student price of $59.95 (U.S.).

And I thought stealing did not involve money transfer.

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Mixed Tape 22 is out

by Volker Weber

Download here >

I hate being lied to

by Volker Weber

Especially when I would have understood the truth much better. When confronted with the lie, the other person said: "Sorry, I am only telling you what I have been told to share with you".

Cool app: Wall Street Journal Reader for BlackBerry

by Volker Weber

Lets you read the full content of the WSJ. Everywhere. Installation is pretty easy.

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Treo Pro unveiled

by Volker Weber

Windows Mobile 6.1, full keyboard, HSDPA radio (tri-band UMTS, quad-band GSM), GPS, 802.11b/g, a 320 x 320 touchscreen display, 256MB ROM, 128MB RAM, a 2-megapixel camera, support for microSDHC cards up to 32GB, standard 3.5mm headphone jack and a 1500 mAh battery. I like the design.

iPhone 2.0.2 remains unlocked

by Volker Weber

Apple updates the iPhone software to 2.0.2. Unlocked iPhones remain unlocked after the upgrade. Cydia and Installer disappear, so you have to jailbreak it again, if you need that.

Enhanced Calculator for S60

by Volker Weber

Hello and welcome to Enhanced Calculator for S60! My name is Jarmo Lahtinen, and I work in S60 Java organization with a wide range of Mobile Java related projects.

Have you noticed that even in the latest S60 devices the calculator application is very simple and limited in features? And have you noticed that in Series 40 devices there is a much better calculator application? The calculator in Series 40 devices is a Java application, and we started to think here about replacing the current S60 native calculator with this one. So, I took the source codes of the original Series 40 application and updated it a little bit. The end result is here, Java calculator application for S60 devices!

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[Thanks, Ben]

How to count Olympic medals

by Volker Weber

I was searching Google today with "olympic medal count" and was shown these results:

Then I was wondering whether US media would represent these numbers in a different fashion. So I went to CNN, clicked on Sports and was transferred to Sports Illustrated. Indeed. :-)

And it's not a new development.

PC: I'm still the king

by Volker Weber

Larger >

Business Social Networking Geography: Does It Matter Where My Contacts Are?

by Volker Weber

Our own Esther:

Although the Internet is global, and you may do business with people anywhere in the world, most people tend to look for people-networks close to home. Or do they? Should they? If the point of social networking is to connect with other people, ought it to matter where we are?

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BlackBerry Bold: the verdict

by Volker Weber

I have tested the Bold now for a week and my initial impression was on the money. This is the best BlackBerry ever. The display is just stunning, whether in bright sunlight or in a dark room. 240 dpi is almost like paper.

The Bold is well built, and faster than any other BB, by a factor of two. You can feel it everywhere. The large 1500mAh battery lasts a few days in normal operation and you have to really stress it to wear it out in a day. Battery life is similar to an E71, better than an iPhone and much much better than an iPhone 3G.

The browser is OK now, not Safari-good, but better than IE on Windows Mobile. Media player is OK now as well and reasonably fast if you can learn a few keyboard shortcuts. 3.5 mm jack lets you connect decent headphones. I only have the bare device so I can't tell you how good the RIM headset is but I am not holding my breath.

The keyboard is good, better than an 8800, much better than an 8100, maybe not as tight as the Curve keyboard. It's the largest BB since the 8700, but it holds better than an 8800 and has more heft than the Curve. If you need a device as light as the Curve, you should pass this one. For everybody else it is the Über-Blackberry.

Would I want to use it? No. Simple reason: Mac support is terrible. If you don't have a Mac? Or have a Mac and live on a BES? Go for it.

Our inability to understand the exponential function

by Volker Weber

Very interesting lecture which comes in eight parts: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - Transscript

Death Star over San Francisco

by Volker Weber

Wer einmal ...

by Volker Weber

Das Vertrauen der Deutschen in die SPD ist offenbar schwer erschüttert. Laut einer Umfrage nimmt nur jeder siebte Bundesbürger den Sozialdemokraten ihre Absage an ein rot-rotes Bündnis nach der Bundestagswahl ab.

Ich glaube, die Union wird dem Herrn Koch noch sehr dankbar sein, dass er sich vor der Hessenwahl in den Fuß geschossen hat.

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X Lossless Decoder

by Volker Weber

X Lossless Decoder (XLD) is a tool for Mac OS X that is able to decode/convert/play various 'lossless' audio files. The supported audio files can be split into some tracks with cue sheet when decoding.

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A day in the park

by Volker Weber

New blog: Engineering Windows 7

by Volker Weber

Welcome to our first post on a new blog from Microsoft—the Engineering Windows 7 blog, or E7 for short. E7 is hosted by the two senior engineering managers for the Windows 7 product, Jon DeVaan and Steven Sinofsky. Jon and Steven, along with members of the engineering team will post, comment, and participate in this blog. ...

Our intent is to post “regularly”. We’ll watch the comments and we will definitely participate both in comments and potentially in follow-up posts as required. We will make sure that members of the Windows 7 development team represent themselves as such as well. While we want to keep the dialog out in the open, please feel free to use email to steven.sinofsky@microsoft.com should you wish to. In particular, email is a good way to suggest topics we might have a chance to discuss on the blog.

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Damien Katz: REST, I just don't get it

by Volker Weber

As the guy who created CouchDB, I should be a big cheerleader for RESTful architectures. But the truth is, I just don't get it.

Damien does not get it. His readers do. Interesting reading.

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Quick fact check on Lotus Symphony

by Volker Weber

Has IBM announced plans to make Symphony run composite apps? Source?

I can has gol medal?

by Volker Weber

Welcome to LOLBush - President Bush's holiday snaps from his Beijing Olympic vacation - given the LOLCats treatment.

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[Thanks, Simon]

Formula Student

by Volker Weber

Motion blur. Emotion blur. Focal length 85mm, aperture f/14.0 , shutter 1/50.

Last week I visited Formula Student Germany on the Hockenheim race track again and shot 700+ frames. The cars are fast, and shooting them at 1/8000 does not do them justice. I'd rather live with the blur.

Fixed

by Volker Weber

You need a magician though ...

How to clean a car in five days or more

by Volker Weber

This is not 20/80. It starts off slowly, but then madness sets in.

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HitMeLater: A Snooze Button For Your Email

by Volker Weber

Just forward any email to 24@hitmelater.com and we'll resend it to you 24 hours later.

You can replace "24" with any number or day. For example, forward it to 4@hitmelater.com and you'll get it back four hours later. Send it to wednesday@hitmelater.com and we'll send it back to you the first Wednesday morning after today.

That should also work just nicely as a spam relay.

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Silly, but rather funny

by Volker Weber

Birmingham City Council has admitted sending out leaflets which showed its US namesake's skyline instead.

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[Thanks, Nick]

Harald Martenstein: Am Meer

by Volker Weber

Als ich am Meer ankam, sah ich, dass an dem Haus ein Schild befestigt war, das im Internet unsichtbar gewesen ist. Auf dem Schild stand: "Night Club Eva. The real thing for the real gentleman". Daneben war das Foto einer Nackten zu besichtigen. Sie lachte. Neben dem Haus befand sich eine Art Scheune. Dort stand auf einem Schild: "Texas. Jeden Abend Lifemusik".

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PocketMac for BlackBerry 4.1.25 available - syncs with BlackBerry Bold

by Volker Weber

Download from RIM by clicking on the image above. And it does seem to work okay:

And that was the good news. PocketMac still fails to deliver. The first sync was not finished after one hour. It did sync a few contacts but not all of them. And the calendar still seems to be empty.

PocketMac also promises to sync iPhoto and iTunes but tells me the feature is disabled because there is no media card. It does not matter if you select Storage Mode or not. It fails both ways.

Planet Lotus seems to be the new TinyURL

by Volker Weber

sic :-)

Storms in the clouds leave users up creek without a paddle

by Volker Weber

Weeks after Amazon's S3 cloud storage service went down due to a software error, and in the midst of continued MobileMe issues, two more online services have suffered problems. Gmail was unavailable for a couple of hours on Monday because of a software glitch, and online storage service The Linkup (TLU) shut down its service last Friday after losing nearly half of the data it had stored. The appeal of these services is obvious—they should be a reliable, scalable, cost-effective resource you can access from anywhere. But the recent disruptions show some of the risks of online services. What do you do when they go down?

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[Thanks, Pieterjan]

Selektiver Tierschutz

by Volker Weber

Der Handel mit Hunde- und Katzenfellen soll aus Tierschutzgründen in Deutschland verboten werden.

Es gibt drei Arten von Tieren:

1. Süß: Dazu zählen Hunde und Katzen. Noch süßer als Babies. Diese Art von Tieren darf man nicht töten.
2. Eklig: Ratten, Mücken, etc. Darf man sofort platt machen.
3. Nützlich: Kühe, Schweine, etc. Manchmal "süß", speziell als Babies. Niemals eklig. Dürfen getötet und verwertet werden.

Die Zuordnung ist natürlich für jeden Kulturkreis anders. Hunde gehören zum Beispiel in einigen Ländern nicht zur Kategorie 1 sondern 3.

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Life is good

by Volker Weber

Blue sky, white clouds, lots of wind, not too hot. Life is good. Find me on the deck ... [Fetching the Sonos remote]

Addicted to your BlackBerry but your wife does not approve

by Volker Weber

Enter a new feature of the BlackBerry Bold clock. What does it do?

You get to switch off the LED which otherwise becomes a beacon at night. You can also switch off the radio so you are not receiving any messages and you can dim the brightness of the backlight so you don't have to read your steamy messages under the sheets.

Stop - you are doing it all wrong

by Volker Weber

Andrew says that Twitter is mis-used as a chat room - and wants to replace it with a proper chat room. That isn't going to work well, since you need to tell people to stop doing something, and then to start doing something else instead.

Yes, you can set up a chat room. And then you need to set some expectations to what you will be seeing there. And then you wait for people to show up. But what do you do, when they run wild? When it's not used how you intended to? Moderate? Throw out some people?

That is the beauty of Twitter. You listen to the people you want to listen to. You don't set ANY rules. You just ignore what you are not interested in.

It always puzzles me, when people tell me what I must and what I must not write. If you don't like what you see, stop looking. That's how Twitter works. It's not a chat room. It isn't even a room. It just gives you a unified view of interesting stuff.

I am not going to tell you to use Twitter. Find my micro postings in the right side bar. Or on Twitter.

Änderungen in RSS-Feeds verfolgen

by Volker Weber

Mit redaktionellen Änderungen ist so ein SpOn-Artikel doch gleich viel interessanter.

Tweet of the day

by Volker Weber

Auch nicht besser

by Volker Weber

Diese falsche Korrektur kommt bei mir nicht vor. Aber der Vorschlag meines iPhone ist auch nicht besser:

Alleine schon, weil es verlässt statt verläßt heißen müsste.

Denglishe Überschrift des Tages

by Volker Weber

Motorola zentralisiert das Remote-Management von Enterprise Mobility Assistants

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Wie kommt man bei Google auf die erste Position?

by Volker Weber

Hier Marco Dettweiler, "seriöser Journalist":

heise online relaunches

by Volker Weber

What does yellow mean in your country?

by Volker Weber

Getting up this morning I looked at the headlines on Planet Lotus and found this:

Was it? I asked yesterday, whether you know what this is. There were a couple of reasons. First of all, 118 was not immediately recognizable as a date. Second, it plays on the word yellow. In a German context that can mean two things: yellow and gelb, the german translation for yellow.

1. Yellow is not associated with Lotus here. Fueled by a massive marketing campaign, most Germans would probably think of Yello Strom, a company which has announced a partnership with Microsoft at CeBIT 08.
2. Gelb is associated most with Deutsche Post. That is also true for the color itself. Deutsche Post once was a German state-owned mail monopoly, which also had the monopoly on telephone land lines and was also running a bank. (Years ago you had to apply for a telephone.) Its public image was so bad that Deutsche Telekom which is the successor of the telephone monopoly changed its color to pink magenta as you can see in this picture:

Photo Moros

The mailbox is still yellow, but the yellow phonebooth has been replaced by a public telephone with a magenta stripe. But they are still ubiquitous:

And snail mail is moved in small yellow boxes in large yellow vans:

Somebody suggested yesterday to use 110 for first of October instead of 118 for 11th of August for a "yellowday" since the number fits nicely into ye110w. 110 is also known as the german equivalent for 911 here: the number you call if you are under distress. It is slowly being replaced by 112 though, which in Germany has traditionally been used to call the fire department.

Three years ago there was a new beginning. And it was not yellow.

The death of planned obsolescence

by Volker Weber

Why today's gadgets keep getting better. (At least until the battery dies.)

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T-Shirt Hell: where all the bad shirts go

by Volker Weber

Do you know what this is?

by Volker Weber

New poll: can you bring a camera phone to work?

by Volker Weber

Every single time I talk about business phones, somebody will ramble about cameras in mobile phones and state that he cannot get into "many companies" with a camera phone and will have to leave it at the reception desk.

That has never happened to me. So what is your place like? Can you bring a camera phone to work?

Results:

Isaac Hayes R.I.P.

by Volker Weber

Thank you for your music. I hope you did not have to watch this >

What's the difference between the Sonos ZP90 and the ZP120

by Volker Weber

I have received a few mails in the last week what my stance is on the new ZonePlayers and which one you should get. Life was pretty easy with the old ZPs. The ZP100 was the all singing, all dancing player you could use for everything. It was sold before there even was a ZP80 and therefore it needed to have more options.

Today, things have changed. The ZP120 is only suited to drive it's own speakers, while the ZP90, like the ZP80, is designed to drive your existing stereo. From the outside there are no big changes. A new logo on the top (the old one had different logos at the front and on top - big CI snafu), but that's it:

Notice that the device has analog in and out, as well as two different digital connectors: optical and coax. The ZP120 has become a completely different animal. It drops the analog out and is no longer suited to drive your stereo:

It keeps the analog in and subwoofer out of the ZP120, and drops two of the four ethernet ports. It also now has a two prong power cord instead of the old bigger three prong one. But notice that the power suppy needs to be set to the correct voltage. Don't import one from the US and fry it when plugging it in. No such danger on the ZP90 since it autoselects.

The invisible change is the new wireless support which promises twice the range and faster transfers, for both players, and not between old and new players. If you don't have any difficulties with your current setup, there is no need to upgrade. And that's a good thing.

wirres.net: konsumenten sind nur als schafe erwünscht

by Volker Weber

rechte-inhaber, kopierschutz, DRM, DMCA, fairplay, plays for sure — ich kann das alles nicht mehr hören. leiden konnte ich es auch noch nie.

übersetzt bedeuten diese ganzen begriffe nicht schutz für künstler oder gar schutz für die verwerter von künstlerischen arbeiten, sondern probleme für den konsumenten, unbedienbarkeit oder schwerbedienbarkeit oder verkrüppelung von elektronischen geräten und kriminalisierung von kulturschaffenden. schützen oder "rechte managen" können diese technologien nicht, am ende bleiben nur menschen die ihre online gekaufte musik oder videos nicht mehr hören und sehen können, die ihre gekaufte musik oder videos nicht auf jeden beliebigen mp3- oder video-player abspielen können, kunden deren geräte zwar fernsehsendungen aufnehmen können, diese aber nicht mehr oder nur auf umwegen wieder herausgeben, DVDplayer die screenshots unterbinden, DVDs die sich weigern sich abspielen zu lassen weil sie auf der anderen seite des antlantiks gekauft wurden — kurz: diese ganzen techniken schaden dem konsumenten — und damit auch der industrie.

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Repeat after me: DRM is bad for the customer.

Pwnage 2.0.2 is out

by Volker Weber

You need this to jailbreak the latest firmware release 2.0.1. Will unlock the 1st gen iPhone and the iPod touch, but not iPhone 3G.

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Madness, thy name is Lotus

by Volker Weber

Lotus Engineering in Norfolk has been finding ways to make electric cars noisier, to make it safer for pedestrians and cyclists.

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[Thanks, Nick]

Securase: Erase NSF Database Security

by Volker Weber

SysTools Securase will easily remove local security settings from local Lotus Notes NSF database. Remove local security from NSF database showing "You are not authorized to access that database." error.

Won't help you with locally encrypted databases I guess.

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And the prize for the worst piece of Mac software goes to ...

by Volker Weber

... PocketMac. First it needs to close ALL other apps to install. Then it takes forever. Then it needs to reboot. Then you do it all over again to install their latest drivers. Drivers?

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Contradiction

by Volker Weber

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Great House collection: Afterdark

by Volker Weber

Who is this admin@microsoft.com

by Volker Weber

... and why is he using my mail address?

And why should I trust anybody from Spain? ;-)

Alan Brill and Ed Lepofsky, err ...

by Volker Weber

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Calvin & Jobs

by Volker Weber

More Calvin & Jobs

[Source]

Telephone Piano

by Volker Weber

[via Mobile Zeitgeist]

Nikon announces Coolpix P6000 with GPS

by Volker Weber

Nikon has announced its flagship compact, the Coolpix P6000. Built around a 13.5 megapixel, 1/1.72 inch sensor (0.41 square cm), the camera has a 4x zoom starting at a respectably wide-angle - equivalent to 28mm. It also records RAW files in a new NRW format that can be converted in-camera or with the forthcoming Windows version of View NX or Windows Imaging Component compatible applications. The other stand-out feature is the inclusion of built-in GPS logging of the locations at which images were recorded. It is expected to start shipping in September for around $500/£429.99/€575.00.

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Überraschung: Es gibt noch Software für PalmOS

by Volker Weber

München, 7. August 2008 - Rechtzeitig zum Saisonstart der deutschen Fußball-Bundesliga veröffentlicht die Berliner Softwarefirma Envi.con KG in Zusammenarbeit mit der DFL Deutsche Fußball Liga GmbH das beliebte Fußballinformationsprogramm 'Bundesliga Mobil' auch für mobile Geräte mit Palm OS Betriebssystem, wie beispielsweise dem Palm (R) Centro (TM) Smartphone. Aus diesem Anlass stellt Palm in ausgewählten Märkten von Saturn Hansa und Media Markt Käufern des Palm Centro Smartphones Bundesliga mobil auf einer MicroSD Speicherkarte kostenlos zur Verfügung. ... Bundesliga Mobil, ist ab sofort für Palm OS erhältlich. Die Vollversion kostet 9,95 Euro inklusive Online-Updates für die laufende Bundesliga-Saison 2008/2009.

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Marketing wizards

by Volker Weber

There were quite a few deliveries today at vowe's magic flying circus. One of them was the UPS delivery van which dropped off an envelope from TomTom. It was a flat envelope so it could hardly contain anything valuable.

So what was inside? A puzzle suited for 2-3 year olds with three pieces missing and a personalized envelope with a pamphlet and the missing pieces. Message they try to convey: TomTom has the missing pieces. Message they did convey: this company wastes money, fuel and time to deliver a message they can get across by mail.

Somebody in marketing needs to be taken out the back and shot.

Maybe it's just me. And IBM.

by Volker Weber

So I wanted to take a look at www.ibm.com/homepage which is supposed to host a public facing Lotus Connections site. Entered my IBM ID and password and got this:

Pressing the button brings me back to the same screen, clicking the link reveals this:

Cute Blonde 18 Year Old Babysitter

by Volker Weber

When is your kid too old for a babysitter that happens to be a smokin hot blonde 18 year old?

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New toy: BlackBerry 9000 "Bold"

by Volker Weber

The new BlackBerry Bold has arrived. And it is stunning. The screen is 480x320 and crystal clear. Here are just a few screenshots to get you started.

To be continued ...

Failbook: Nicolas S.

by Volker Weber

[Danke, Schweppes]

The Dream Customer

by Volker Weber

"It's the strangest thing — I can't connect to the wireless anymore. I can still use the Microsoft but not the email."

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[Thanks, Alper]

Don't even bother with the Sonos free music offer

by Volker Weber

When you upgrade and register your Sonos to 2.6 you get an email with a free music offering, which according to Sonos is worth $200. I did not get it in the first place, since I upgraded my system last week and did not trigger the email. It appears however that this mail is pretty generic and I could figure out what to use quite easily. You won't have any difficulties either:

http://www.sonos.com/landing/registration_offer?email=user%40domain.com

I assume, Sonos checks if you registered a system under this email address. If they don't, well ...

Anyway, I started with the first offering: Classical.com. They offer three "albums" with 10 tracks each: Classical, Jazz, World Music. You don't get to chose what you want. It's just these three compilations. And they are plain awful. I have no idea who came up with this, and who executed it at Classical.com, but if this is their best, you can just trash them. Anything you download from the dark corners of the Internets is better. Anything. 128 kbps MP3, badly tagged, no correct track numbers, no coverart, no artists, or artist, track number and title in the title field. Kiddies in the bedrooms of their parents home produce better stuff.

I was so disgusted that I did not bother to check out the other offerings. eMusic says I can cancel anytime. Why do I need to cancel? Is this a scam? For LiveDownloads.com I get a coupon code. Well, well, well. This is not on par with what I expect from Sonos. This is what you get with your Aldi PC.

The First $1000 iPhone Application

by Volker Weber

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Today's heroes

by Volker Weber

[Merci, Claude]

Secure your Thinkpad R400 for $0.00

by Volker Weber

[Thanks, Sascha]

How to get IBM's attention

by Volker Weber

I guess if you call yourself the "The Unofficial Poster Child For Lotus Notes and Domino", you have to do it in ALL CAPS. :-)

Underwater Love

by Volker Weber

Ben shows off the waterproof Sonos controller. I would recommend though you don't try that with your own gear. I did not.

ThinkPad X200: Save money by ordering a Solid State Drive

by Volker Weber

Not sure they actually want to make that offer. But there it is >

[Thanks, Malte]

Mystery resolved: new Sonos gear

by Volker Weber

So what was in the two mystery boxes last week? The smaller box was just there to confuse you. The big one contained a lot of Sonos gear, most of which goes back tomorrow. The only keeper is the new ZonePlayer 120:

As you can see, it's much much smaller than the ZP100, and it loses some capabilities. No more analog out (just subwoofer), two instead of four Ethernet ports. It's smaller because it has a new switching power supply. It can drive two speakers with up to 55 Watt RMS per channel at 8 Ohms, and more than 100 at 4 Ohms. And it gets hot while doing that. Well, you won't keep it on your lap; but please don't put any paper on top of it. The other gear was stuff I already have and the new ZP90, which looks almost identical to the ZP80. And it now has the correct Sonos logo on the top.

The other major difference between the old ZP80/ZP100 and new ZP90/ZP120 is the wireless network. It now has three antennas in a MIMO setup. You know this from Draft N access points. Throughput and range should be higher. Only between new devices of course.

You also get new software today. Update your existing systems. Major new feature is a bigger index, which now can hold 65,000 tracks. As you upgrade to 2.6, Sonos will send you an email with instructions on how to redeem 150 Euro worth of music from Classical.com (3 albums), eMusic (50 tracks) and LiveDownloads.com (10 concerts). Consider this a first free shot. :-)

It's all nice and dandy, but there are a few things I am disappointed about:

• No new controller. The Soviet iPod still rules.
• No Gigabit Ethernet. I don't want to downgrade my wiring by running it through a 100 mbit switch.
• ZoneBridge not updated to new wireless standard

Other things on my wishlist:

1. iPhone controller
2. Desktop controller on par with iTunes
3. All-in-one device like a Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin
4. QoS. Hanno says he can saturate SonosNet with non-Sonos traffic. Sonos should be able to prevent this.

Summary: Good enhancements. No need to buy new gear. I think they are working on more ...

Update: Sonos also launched a new website:

Removed from Domino 8.5.0

by Volker Weber

We are planning to deliver the directory independence and Lotuscript editor pieces during 2009 in 8.5.x releases. Those are, ironically, the two deferred features versus what was shown at Lotusphere. Neither is dropped altogether, just coming later.

"Directory independence" allows you to put your Notes/Domino users into Active Directory instead of the Domino directory. Maybe you can even use other LDAP directories.

The new Lotusscript editor was the feature that got the most applause during the Lotusphere 2008 opening session. Looks like they can preview it again at Lotusphere 2009.

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Italian’s Detention Illustrates Dangers Foreign Visitors Face

by Volker Weber

He was a carefree Italian with a recent law degree from a Roman university. She was “a totally Virginia girl,” as she puts it, raised across the road from George Washington’s home. Their romance, sparked by a 2006 meeting in a supermarket in Rome, soon brought the Italian, Domenico Salerno, on frequent visits to Alexandria, Va., where he was welcomed like a favorite son by the parents and neighbors of his girlfriend, Caitlin Cooper.

But on April 29, when Mr. Salerno, 35, presented his passport at Washington Dulles International Airport, a Customs and Border Protection agent refused to let him into the United States. And after hours of questioning, agents would not let him travel back to Rome, either ... he had been sent in shackles to a rural Virginia jail. And there he remained for more than 10 days, locked up without charges or legal recourse while Ms. Cooper, her parents and their well-connected neighbors tried everything to get him out.

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Don't buy a Mac

by Volker Weber

Funny I should say that, but no, don't buy a Mac. I have been very satisfied with Macs for more than 5 years now. But I have seen quite a few people who are not. If you fall into any of those categories, you may also be disappointed:

1. Your vendor seems to support the Mac, but they really don't. The most obvious one is Microsoft. Yes, there is Office 2008, but it sucks. It's not on feature parity with Office 2007, and not even files translate nicely. Outlook 2007 is nice, but Entourage (the Mac Exchange client) is terrible. There is no Visual Studio for the Mac, nor Visio, or Project, or OneNote. Other vendors who don't really support the Mac although they seem to are IBM and RIM.
2. You like fiddling with your computer. Macs are best used as they are. They can be incredibly wasteful in an effort to not make you a sysadmin. They carry brazillions of drivers for printers, cameras and other peripherals so you never have to touch any of them.
3. You like installing and twiddling with the latest and greatest software. The Mac basically comes with everything you need. Install OpenOffice, remove the Microsoft Office Trial, and be done with it. Yes, there is excellent software out there, and you can start looking for it after a month or so, but if you want to bring in all the junk you used on Windows you better stay on Windows.
4. You want to be cool. That won't work. You can't be cool if you try to be cool.

There you have it. Four reasons not to buy a Mac. One more thing:

If you buy a Mac to run Windows, you have been had. Yes, you can run Windows in Fusion or Parallels. But then you get to maintain two computers. Your old Windows, and your new Mac. Ok, that may satisfy category 2 users, but it defies the purpose of having a Mac in the first place.

The best machine to run Windows is the Lenovo ThinkPad X300. I know it's a bit expensive, but you want the very best.

London Bananas

by Volker Weber

You've reached the London Banana project. The following pages contain images of banana skins found in the urban landscape.

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[Thanks, Ben]

This program alone is reason enough to jailbreak the iPhone

by Volker Weber

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Kevin Kelly: Predicting the next 5,000 days of the web

by Volker Weber

Looks like he is doing it all wrong :-)

by Volker Weber

iPhone starts to crack

by Volker Weber

The left side is starting to crack open. The right side still looks ok:

Why you should not trust machine translation

by Volker Weber

Apples and ...

by Volker Weber

Sehr schön: Die Manta Verschwörung

by Volker Weber

Auflösung bei Spiegel Online >

Google Code: Precipitate

by Volker Weber

Precipitate lets you search for and launch the information you have stored in the cloud from within Spotlight or Google Desktop for Mac. It currently supports the following services:

• Google Bookmarks
• Google Docs

Precipitate works by creating files on your machine that are imported by Spotlight, then periodically checking in with the server and updating the local files to reflect any changes. Note that changes may take up to an hour to be visible in local searches.

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[Thanks, David]

Creating a mobile hotspot on your Symbian or Windows smartphone

by Volker Weber

I received a very nice email from Steven today with this subject line:

thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, danke... (Joikuspot)

It happened because I briefly mentioned JoikuSpot in a post about NetShare. Well, nice words from Steven, but frankly, I should have told you weeks ago when I received this mail from Brendon:

You're a man who dabbles regularly with mobile phones. You've probably seen it already, but thought I'd drop you a line and tell you about Joikuspot. It's a piece of phone software (s60 phones, win mobile) that creates a bridge between the phones wifi connection and internet connection turning it into a mobile wireless hotspot. So cleverly simple I wish I would have thought of it! Their premium edition has just been released. Now if only there was a version for the iphone 3g....

All hail to Brendon! Here is what Joiku has to say about their software:

JoikuSpot turns your phone to a Wi-Fi HotSpot. Share your phones 3G internet connection over WLAN with laptops and iPods. Premium comes with VPN so you can access corporate intraweb and email.

JoikuSpot Premium costs 25 Euro. There is also a free Light version which only supports HTTP and HTTPS. Read the fine print about configuring your browser to automatically adjust its proxy setting.

Both JoikuSpot versions work on S60 3rd Edition devices. For Windows Mobile you need to get WMWifiRouter for 20 Eur.

99% of incoming mail is spam

by Volker Weber

Just a few hours ago I cleaned out my spam bucket. Now it contains 283 spam messages. I can easily get thousands of mails a day, and less than one percent is legit. And it's getting worse.

Conclusion: if you are architecting a solution which require emails for notification, go back to the drawing board.

Apple removes NetShare from the App Store within hours

by Volker Weber

Apple has apparently put the blocks on an iPhone application that turns the device into a modem for a PC. Macrumours reports that Canadian software company Nullriver Inc. released the application, called NetShare, yesterday through Apple's iTunes store, but it was withdrawn within hours. ... Nullriver insists that the application did not violate Apple's developer guidelines.

NetShare turns the iPhone into a Wi-Fi hotspot, much like Joikuspot does on Symbian S60 phones. It's good to see that Apple is as heavy-handed as we expected them to be.

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Travelers' Laptops May Be Detained At Border

by Volker Weber

Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed. ... The policies cover "any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form," including hard drives, flash drives, cell phones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover "all papers and other written documentation," including books, pamphlets and "written materials commonly referred to as 'pocket trash' or 'pocket litter.' "

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Install this update now

by Volker Weber

Apple finally fixes two bad ass bugs: the widely reported DNS vulnerability and the ARDAgent disaster.

Quote of the day

by Volker Weber

Boah, sind die unter Druck, dass sie sowas rausgeben?

Erste Reaktion meines Redakteurs auf diese Meldung.

heise online: Notes vs. Exchange - Microsoft sieht sich als Gewinner, IBM sich auch

by Volker Weber

Microsoft COO Ken Turner meldet Millionen von Notes-Kunden, die zu Exchange konvertieren. Stimmt gar nicht, sagt IBM, wir wachsen beständig seit beinahe vier Jahren.

180 Kommentare in drei Stunden ...

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